Sunday, November 07, 2010

"No matter what we did," Aranda said, "we couldn't make any plays. We tried a couple of different things. A zone. A man. A pressure. We weren't executing."

The Warriors' defensive miseries found company in the offensive woes.

The problems started during pregame warm-ups when right slotback Kealoha Pilares, the Warriors' No. 2 receiver, experienced tightness in his left hamstring. He initially suffered a strained hamstring while warming up during halftime of last week's game against Idaho.

"I tried to sprint, and I felt I tweaked it again," Pilares said. "It felt sore. I knew I couldn't go 100 percent."

The Broncos set a school record with 737 yards of offense and limited the Warriors to 196 — Hawaii’s lowest output since installing the run-and-shoot in 1999.“I certainly didn’t think that would happen going into it,” Petersen said. “I know this, though: Our guys were ready to play.”

"We just wanted to play our coverages and get pressure with our front four," Silva said.

But it rarely worked, and Moore might as well have been throwing darts in a bar while editing the Broncos record book on seemingly every play. He had enough time in the pocket to text Heisman voters: "this 1 4 u."

MEANWHILE, UH quarterback Bryant Moniz rarely had time to do anything but duck. He was sacked seven times for minus-47 yards as BSU came at him from all angles, which the Warriors said they knew about. But the Broncos "mixed things up," Green said.

“I think Hawaii does such a good job of mixing up looks,” said offensive coordinator Brian Harsin, when asked why he used the no-huddle so much. “They do such a good job of giving you a variety. It’s hard to get a bead on them.”Moore likes the attack for several reasons, including what it does to a defense.“The tempo helps get the defense into more base coverages and base defenses,” he said. “They don’t have time to throw in their unique blitzes and things like that when they only have a short few seconds to call plays.”

"They did their homework," Hawaii quarterback Bryant Moniz said. "They made it hard to get to our slots. They disguised their pressures very well and noise was a big factor."

Boise State coach Chris Petersen said his team delivered the complete performance that it needed to beat a very good Hawaii team.

"We have tremendous respect for Hawaii — they are playing great," Petersen said. "We just happened to be hitting on all cylinders today, and I'm glad, because we need to do that to do what we want to do."

Seven different players had at least a half sack Saturday, with Winston Venable, Tyrone Crawford and Jarrell Root each having solo sacks in addition to those by McClellin and Baker. Jonathan Brown and Ryan Winterswyk combined on a sack.

Silva's 13 picks for his UH career tie him for the school record with Keone Jardine and Kelvin Millhouse.

The senior from Kamehameha-Hawaii has seven interceptions for the season. Chase Minnifield of Virginia and Domonic Cook of Buffalo entered action yesterday with six each to lead the nation. Neither had one yesterday. Walter Briggs holds the Hawaii single-season mark with nine.

And this is one quote that I never want to read again:

"They outplayed us in all phases," McMackin said. "But our punter had a great game."

But Alex Dunnachie actually did have a great game, averaging 44 yards on 9 punts.

For the 7-3 (5-1 WAC) Warriors, who had entered with conference championship aspirations, it was a 3-hour, 3-minute clinic in all facets of the game. Well, maybe everything except punting, since the Warriors did all of that with nine boots while the Broncos' punter was, well, who even knew where he was?

For all anybody knew he could have been part of the posse that hounded UH quarterback Bryant Moniz all day, sacking him seven times and holding the nation's top-ranked passing offense to a single-quarter-like 151 yards for the game.